Ash Wednesday

As the 1920s progressed, Eliot, trapped in an unhappy marriage to Vivien Haigh-Wood, increasingly felt the need for a firm religious faith. Eliot had demonstrated this sense of the brokenness of life in his landmark poem The Waste Land, but he was now moving toward the expression of another worldview altogether. He was attracted to the Anglo-Catholic movement that featured quite prominently in the Church of England at the time. In June 1927, he was baptized and became a member of the Church of England. Eliot enjoyed the formal aspects of worship, including Mass and communion, and he fully accepted all the teachings of the church. Eliot credited his conversion with giving existence meaning and also believed strongly in the power of prayer.

If Eliot had presented some of the hollow and dissatisfying aspects of modern life in The Waste Land, the poems that followed his admission to the Church of England were a new departure for him. His first “conversion” poem was in fact not Ash Wednesday but “Journey of the Magi,” which was published in 1927. The poem is narrated in old age by one of the three wise men who came to Bethlehem to worship and present gifts to the infant Jesus.